Steve Clarke says he is “not concerned” about deciding his future as Scotland manager before the World Cup, despite his contract expiring after the tournament.
Clarke, who took over in May 2019 and led Scotland to three of the four major competitions, had previously floated the idea of returning to club management and had publicly stated that he wanted to decide on his future before the tournament.
But asked if he still wanted to have that clarity after Scotland lost 1-0 to Ivory Coast, he said: “No, I want to focus on the World Cup. If something happens, you’ll know for sure and if it doesn’t, I don’t care. I want to go into the World Cup and the players in the right frame of mind. What happens will happen.”
Scotland lost 1-0 to Ivory Coast in Liverpool on Tuesday, their second friendly defeat of the international break.
It was also a flat display at Everton’s Hill Dickinson Stadium, attended by Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Kenny Dalglish and Toffees manager David Moyes. As in Saturday’s 1-0 defeat to Japan at Hampden Park, Clarke’s side were met with some booing at half-time and full-time.
Scotland have two more warm-up games against Curaçao and Bolivia, who Clark revealed in his post-match press conference as their second opponents, before heading to America’s biggest stage for the first time in 28 years and facing Haiti, Morocco and Brazil in the same group.
When asked about the booing and whether it affected his team, Clark said: “The more you talk about it, the more you encourage people to be negative. I thought my team was very positive.”
“I don’t think we deserved to lose. We started well and were trying to go forward with a positive outlook. Our system gave them problems at first, but we conceded a really bad goal on the counter-attack. Really good teams punish that. They’re a good team.”
“We didn’t react well, we lost control of the game and that’s something we have to improve on.
“We dominated the game in the second half. We couldn’t create anything clean, but that’s a credit to Ivory Coast.
“We need quality and composure in the final third. If we can do that, the chances will come.”
